I was driving around today when a thought crossed my mind. I had thought of it before, but it never really bothered me. I grew up down here. I know a reasonable amount of California history. But it really started bugging me today.
Why did El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula develop as a sprawling suburban conglomerate of cities, instead of a centralized urban mass like the cores of most other American cities?
Reason 1) By being developed very recently, Los Angeles benefits from being a relatively “planned” city - construction was done on a large scale suburban planned community manner, instead of a more organic metropolis growing over time.
Reason 2) Geography - Los Angeles/Orange Counties are made up of several connected valleys with (for all intents and purposes) no rivers. It originally started as several smaller cities and their crop fields spread out across the valleys. Only after mass immigration to Southern California did they start growing, and when they did, they simply grew out into the orange groves and other fields, instead of building more densely on top of the existing cities.
Reason 3) By virtue of “growing up” in the 20th century, Los Angeles was virtually build around cars. Hence, it was easier to build more housing a mile down the road that it was to develop more dense housing centrally located.
Reason 4) Earthquakes. Combined with being a recent city, most buildings are relatively low-slung and made out of wood, not brick (though there are a lot of concrete block buildings).
Reason 5) Economy. A lot of cash flowed into developing Southern California. Along with Los Angeles came the aptly named City of Industry and Port of Long Beach. A lot of money was thrown in, and affordable land and mass-built housing made it an attractive place to come to.
All of the above, I’d say. Except that LA’s sprawl had less to do with the automobile at first than with the excellent mass transit system it once had. LA’s trolley system carried about 80 million people per year during the 1930s. That helped alleviate initial sprawl and make the necessity of a concentrated downtown not as pressing as it had been with cities that experienced their population booms earlier in history.
Interesting thesis - but what was the major factor that helped spur urban sprawl? From a historical perspective, wasn’t it environmental constraints that initially limited settlement size (lack of fresh water and limited rainfall) for a population largely involved in agricultural activity? I would think that once water became more freely available (don’t know when this came about, but I remember reading something regarding the Owen Resevoir (?) in the early 1900’s), then that made it feasible for more people to live and work in the area. Take away the greater water availability and I suspect that the region would have evolved differently (although maybe not radically different - I suspect that there would have been sprawl, but not to the degree that is present today. I think Los Angeles in particular would have developed a higher population density in and around its CBD than it currently possesses).
I vote earthquakes. It makes no sense to have lots of tall buildings densely packed together when you’re living in a region that can jiggle like the proverbial bowl of suet at any moment.
Good points on the water and trolleys (I had completely forgotten about that system, it is such a footnote in LA now!).
The water does explain why LA never developed before it did. No way we could sustain the current lifestyle without “borrowing” from our neighbors and Mexico.
As for tall buildings, well, there is San Francisco to look “up” to. But we build “up” in Frisco for a good reason (limited real estate makes it worth the risk).
Hm, speaking of San Fran, another thing LA lacks - a real financial district. For a city of its size and economic importance, LA’s “downtown” is a pitiful collection of relatively minor (and dated) buildings, earthquake avoidance aside.
Sure, but keep in mind, why pay a premium for a downtown real estate location for no discernable benefit? There’s no major population concentration and the transportation infrastructure lends itself to not needing to be concentrating in one area.
In fact, it may actually be an easier commute for employees to NOT have a location in downtown.
What’s different about L.A. is that unlike other major urban centres, the L.A. area started off with many towns close to one another, owing to the various benefits of being in southern California. The amazing growth of the area has caused them to all merge together. Big cities often become the main reason for being there; if you look at places like Minneapolis or Denver or Calgary, those cities started out as central places for trade for farmers and ranchers. OVer time more development happened mainly to serve the exisitng city, so of course it was centralized development. In southern California, you had more development not to serve the existing city, but because people just want to live in southern California; the weather is famously good, the agriculture is bountiful, ocean, you name it. The development to serve that idn’t have to build on top of the existing city; people were happy to live in Palm Springs or wherever.
L.A. is similar on a much larger scale to my hometown of Toronto, where the six old cities of Toronto have merged with Mississauga, Pickering, Oakville et al. to greate one giant urban sprawl from Hamilton to Ajax that seems to be growing everywhere at once. It’s not that anyone planned for all those cities to merge together; they all started separately owing to this being the center of old Upper Canada, and over time they grew into one another.
Seventy years ago, if you’d looked at a map of southern California you’d have seen a lot of small towns that happened to be very close together. It would have been easy to identify what downtown L.A. was.
Of course, the point about L.A. being a city that grew mostly after WWII, when automobiles and more money for infrastructure were available, is true. Earthquakes are a good point too, and tall buildings are certainly a major difference between L.A. and my other example of Toronto. But in large part it’s a product of there being so many town centers to start with.
It’s not the earthquakes. Atlanta and Houston have the same kind of sprawling development as LA.
Blame it on the automobile, which enables this sort of development. Everyone wants their own piece of land (even if it’s just a half acre in suburbia), and the automobile allows them to own land and drive to work.
Anyone who has an interest in why cities grow like they do should read The Death and Life of Great American Cities , by Jane Jacobs. It is first year reading for any planning student and it a great book.
Yes, there is. It just isn’t that much to look at, and it is largely… well, underdeveloped. The city of Los Angeles has been trying to get funds to redevelop downtown for years, but as mentioned, it is just easier and cheaper to build outside of LA itself.
Thanks for the reference, plnnr, I might just buy it.
LA’s population only started booming in the 1920’s; consequently, its development was shaped by the automobile far more than older cities.
Also, until the mid sixties (I think; cite not readily available) no building could be built taller than the LA City Hall. This kept a “roof” on development and encouraged horizontal growth at the expense of vertical.
And I disagree with the notion that there is no “downtown”; there is a very nice square within walking distance of the Westin Bonaventure that is teeming with office workers during the day. (I don’t know its name off the top of my head, but I think it’s the one seen right before the final car chase in Ruthless People. “That could quite possibly be the stupidest person on the face of the earth.”) Jeez, I can’t even remember the names of any buildings bordering it. Maybe the Library Tower? The Wells Fargo something? I haven’t been to LA for at least three years.
And I disagree with the notion that there is no “downtown”; there is a very nice square within walking distance of the Westin Bonaventure that is teeming with office workers during the day. (I don’t know its name off the top of my head, but I think it’s the one seen right before the final car chase in Ruthless People. “That could quite possibly be the stupidest person on the face of the earth.”) Jeez, I can’t even remember the names of any buildings bordering it. Maybe the Library Tower? The Wells Fargo something? I haven’t been to LA for at least three years.
Well, the current plans are to develop a huge shopping and business district just south of the current downtown Los Angeles, right around where the Staples Center and convention center are. Some of the more ambitious plans include a new baseball stadium right next to Staples, and/or a super-sized hotel across from Staples to give visitors a place to nap.
Unfortunately, none of the proposals I’ve seen have mentioned anything about fixing the transportation infrastructure around the downtown area. As it is, given that the current freeway interchanges (most notably the whole loop around the 110, 10, and 101) are a congested mess already, I shudder to think of how much worse things will be with all this new development. Sheesh, people, where are the priorities?
I had the same sorts of questions when I lived in Phoenix, AZ.
Ultimately, I’d say half the answer is because of automobiles. The other half is the willingness and speed folks took to planning cities with automobiles in mind and making zoning/development laws accordingly, at the expense of transit and pedestrians.
Oops. I completly hit submit before finishing my thoughts there. Most new development, across the country, not just in LA, ends up looking pretty similar - oceans of parking lots separating strip malls from unused sidewalks, corner station gas-marts, gigantic free-way interchanges, multi-acre housing projects, gigantic mega-stores. On the west coast, Seattle, Portland, and San Fran all at least have downtown cores, still in use today. These cities were quite busy metropolitan areas before automobiles took off. But, if you go to the outskirts of any of these places, where new development is occuring, they end up looking pretty much identical. LA and PHX started really taking off only after city planning started to really involve automobiles - Heck, huge population explosions in these cities were going on around the same decade as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Most other cities didnt have the option to plan their cities out with highways in mind.
Zoning laws today create cities vastly different than those of a century ago. In many cities parking is required, spreading out density. Roads have to be wider, making the narrow, walkable streets of most downtown areas a thing of the past. In some areas I don’t think sidewalks are even required, and if they were I couldnt imagine people walking on them.
I don’t think earthquakes have much to do with it at all. Possibly in LA, it was a concern. But Phoenix is looking quite similar, while being hundreds of miles from a fault line.
That would be Warner Center. Granted, it’s in the Valley and several miles from downtown, but still within L.A. city limits. (At least until those SFV separatists finally get their way…)
Regarding downtown L.A., I think a couple of things have contributed to its lack of concentration (Yes, there is a downtown, but it’s more spread out, like the rest of the city).
Unlike most other large cities, L.A. didn’t begin as a port. It was in the middle of a plain with miles of empty land all around, so it naturally tended to spread out even in early years. Unlike San Francisco and New York, which are confined to a peninsula and an island, respectively, there was nothing to stop outward development.
Secondly, the immediately central area of downtown lost much of its population due to urban renewal, slum clearance, and freeways, which bisected old neighborhoods. Entire residential districts were obliterated, so today we find that downtown is crowded with office workers during the lunch hour, but everyone goes home to their suburbs at night and almost nobody lives there. Where the Bunker Hill Towers–a development of luxury condominiumns–now stand was once a busy mixed-use neighborhood full of life, with numerous Victorian houses up on Bunker Hill and many apartment buildings below. It was supremely a walking city, eloquently described in the Bunker Hill novels of John Fante, as stores, restaurants, and other retail establishments existed to provide for the needs of the residents. This was the area, which, if allowed to survive, would have been L.A.'s answer to Chicago’s Near North Side or New York’s Tribeca.
This is gradually changing, as some old buildings are being converted to residential lofts, and several rather posh rental and condo developments have started to go up. Still, it’s doubtful whether we can ever bring back anything like what was lost.